I started a new job at the beginning of this year, and one of the things I decided to do was use proper capitalization in my Teams messages. I used to not capitalize the first letter of each sentence, unless it was “I” or a proper noun. I’m being more formal in general — but then, I’ve always been formal in my business communication.

I learned how to write business letters in the 90s, in high school. Back then, there was a specific way of doing things: salutation, introduction, action, explanation, closing. In other words:

Greg,

Good morning. Could you please assist me with booking travel for John Smith? Bill to project 12345ABC. Thanks.

JJ Rose

Pretty simple, right? Well, nowadays most business emails I receive, especially from peers or people one link in the chain above or below me, start with “Hi” or “Hey”.

Hi Greg,

I need to book travel for John Smith. He’s working on project 12345ABC. Can you help?

Best regards,

JJ Rose

Most of my company has “Best regards” automatically tied into their email signature. I prefer not to use it; it seems… I don’t know what it seems. It just doesn’t feel right to me.

Same with starting a business email with “Hi” or “Hey”. It’s unprofessional, in my eyes.

I’m reminded of a job I used to have, where I communicated the way I’d always done — at least until my boss said I was being too formal and it might affect our relationships with other departments. It never did, by the way, because the people in the other departments knew me well enough to know that I wasn’t a stick-up-the-ass kind of guy and could easily be talked to about issues in the emails. It got to the point where she had to spot-check each of my business emails before I sent it.

I didn’t last much longer after that in that job.

Maybe it’s the generation I’m from (late Gen X). Maybe it’s how I was taught to communicate and it just stuck and now I can’t change. (Well, okay, I can change. I’d just feel weird doing so.) There’s nothing wrong with being a little more formal, in my opinion. So if I write you an email and it seems like I’m being overly formal, just roll with it. At least you can guarantee I’ll hit all the important points.